There’s a particular kind of heaviness that only works when there’s enough air around it to actually hear it fall — the kind shoegaze bands either find or never do. Midscale find it.
The Paris quartet’s new four-track EP “Dread, This Could Save You“, out May 1 on Phonomagic Records, lives in that pocket: gloomy, mellow, atmospheric, with the layers pulled back enough that the melodies surface clean and the heaviness, when it arrives, hits like weather rather than wallpaper.
It’s a record about fear as a protective instinct, opened with a song called “Braincrash” and closed eight minutes deep into “0-1” with a vocal cry rising in the distance and an acoustic guitar grafting itself onto a piano line.
For listeners new to them: think DIIV, Greet Death, My Bloody Valentine, Grivo, Holy Fawn, Nothing, Slowdive.
Five years in, they’ve put themselves on stages with Foxing, The Telescopes, Pale Blue Eyes, GIFT, and Explosions In The Sky at the Bataclan in Paris. UK tours followed. The New Colossus festival in New York happened in March; Left Of The Dial in Rotterdam is in October. Their 2022 debut EP and 2024 album “Movements” did the groundwork — this new one converts on it.
The starting point was a lineup change. Eliott Barbot joined shortly after “Movements” came out, replacing the band’s previous guitarist. They didn’t bring him in to change the sound — he just slotted in naturally — but his playing reshaped the writing.
Eliott leans more technical than effects-heavy, and singer-guitarist Yohann Badorc, who’d been handling lead, could move to rhythm and let new melodic lines step up. Gabrielle de Saint Léger, the band’s bassist, says adding more space and fewer effects isn’t counter-intuitive for them: the effects are still there, but the melodic arrangements get more care, and at certain moments — like on “Screengaze” — the two guitars clearly call and respond to one another. Eliott himself describes the integration as immediately fluid:
“I experienced my integration into Midscale as very natural because I already really liked their music. They have the discipline to rehearse very often, and I think that helps a lot to be in that kind of dynamic. We composed quite quickly, right from the first rehearsals, whereas I had learned all the other pieces in two weeks. It was incredibly fluid, and it’s a music genre I love. So everything was in place for us to be on the same wavelength.”
Wyświetl ten post na Instagramie
The EP plays in two halves and that wasn’t engineered. “Braincrash” opens like a continuation of “Movements” — shoegaze rolling in heavy, picking up the album’s most feverish parts and pushing them further. “Screengaze” picks up the pace, the melodies getting more room, no less steeped in spleen.
Then it shifts. “Blurry” opens in quieter indie/folk territory before turning soaring and post-rock, more confident than anything they’d done before. “0-1” runs eight minutes and goes the furthest: distorted opening, gentler middle with a worried piano line, the vocal cry, then the acoustic close. Yohann ends up repeating: “It’s time your brain quits / Your mind leaves / Your eyes sink.”
The band wrote four tracks and they came out roughly as written. The only real shuffle was that “0-1” originally came before “Blurry”, and its ending was completely reworked — the original was very noisy, the version you hear now is the opposite. Once they realised what they’d written naturally split into a before-and-after of where the band had been, they kept the order.
Yohann hadn’t finished the lyrics when the demos were done. Going back to them, he saw what he’d been writing about — fear, in different forms, personal and generic at the same time. He’s careful about how he frames it: he isn’t claiming fear saves you outright. The thinking is closer to instinct as a shield — afraid walking home alone, you become wary; afraid of how technology might affect your life, you adopt a critical perspective on it. The mistrust is what protects you.
“I think fear is omnipresent in everyone. We’re all afraid of something, from spiders to heights to death, in different extremes. I’ve come to a conclusion, which isn’t necessarily gospel truth: being afraid is something that protects you. This doesn’t mean that fear saves you, because it’s difficult to detach yourself from it, but your instinct triggers this mistrust, which acts as a shield.”
Clément Libes produced the EP, which is less of a hire than a return. Yohann has known Libes for years and learned everything he knows about sound from him. They’d worked together once before, on the 2022 single “Dean“, released between the debut EP and “Movements“. Libes plays bass, violin, and keyboards in Bruit ≤, also for M83, and has long served as musical director for French rap duo Bigflo & Oli — a CV thick with dense, produced, intense music. What he brought Midscale was the inverse. He helped them streamline. He pushed them to refocus on melody rather than texture-stacking, to think harder about what the effects were actually doing, to refine the sound rather than expand it. Gabrielle puts it directly: they streamlined and refined their sound largely thanks to him.
The EP was tracked at Studio Capitole in Toulouse over four to five days, with Libes producing, arranging, and engineering, supported by Julien Couralet. The band came in with complete demos so the room was efficient — some tracks went down very quickly. The piano on “0-1” wasn’t planned. Libes laid it down in one take, based on the acoustic guitar.
Drummer Sébastien Leboucher on Libes’ editorial pull: “Personally, I think that Clément manages to refine things, not to simplify, but to make them more effective. Even though we already had demos and were very familiar with the tracks, he was able to get me to make some minor rhythmic changes without altering the drumming style.”
Wyświetl ten post na Instagramie
The bigger stages — Bataclan, The New Colossus, Rotterdam in October — get treated as preparation rather than as arrivals. They sharpen the band, force more rigour, more attention to detail. They put the band in stimulating rooms where they meet other artists, professionals, curious onlookers, people who already know the music. But Midscale aren’t trying to leave smaller venues behind. They still enjoy varied set-ups just as much. The big rooms just give them better playing conditions.
The reference points feeding the EP: DIIV and bdrmm have been long-running influences. During the writing, they were also deep into slowcore — Deathcrash, Duster. On film: science fiction with long, immersive, contemplative shots — Blade Runner, Interstellar — at odds with reality but not completely detached from it. There aren’t really specific places. They live in the city, take public transport, play urban venues. That, they say, plays into the melancholic and more radical aspects of the music.
“Dread, This Could Save You” is out May 1 on Phonomagic Records. Recorded by Clément Libes and Julien Couralet at Studio Capitole, Toulouse. Mixed and mastered by Clément Libes. Photos and artwork by Sarah Hottiaux (@orangegrise). The lineup: Yohann Badorc (vocals/guitar), Eliott Barbot (guitar), Gabrielle de Saint Léger (bass), Sébastien Leboucher (drums). Clément Libes plays piano on “0-1”.
